Cloud Gazing
by Saffy-chan
Summary: When Alexandria looses the one person she has left to care for her and take care of her, what's she going to do with her life? She sure wasn't planning to sneak into the military, and especially not right under her uncle's nose! slightly AU, has an OC
1. Chapter 1

Wow, holy plot bunnies this idea just wouldn't leave me be until I wrote it, it's not my normal type of writing either, (for one, there's not even any pairings oO;;) and it's an action/adventure story, with gasp an OC! We all know Safia never writes using OC's, but blah, this idea just wouldn't leave me be, so I just had to write it, if you guys like it, I'll continue!

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Clouds.

I was really beginning to wonder how logical it was to judge the outcome of a day simply by looking up at the sky. Honestly I think I must be loosing my mind, nothing bad was going to happen just because there were some signs of precipitation lingering who knows how many miles above my head. ...Or are clouds only feet above peoples heads? I really honestly don't recall...I guess that's why you're supposed to pay attention in science class, not day dream about what would happen if a pencil and an pen magically came to life and started arguing about who was the best tool to write with...

I was guilty of doing this far, far too much. Not debating about whether or not a pencil was better than a pen, that only happened once, honestly. What I was guilty of was constantly going off on ridiculously obscurely targeted mental rants about ridiculously obscure things that made no difference to the existence of anything on the planet. Of course, the planet was just a rock, that everyone was standing on, it must get tired of that sometimes...

You see? Totally obscure ridiculous odd rants...and yet they're so interesting to my tiny brain that I barley even notice passing the single most important thing in the all important city of Central, as I walked down the street on my way home from school, and that all important thing, would, of course, be the military headquarters, where the Fuhrer and every other important military man worked. Of course, that wasn't entirely true, the thing about the important people being there anyway, my uncle was stationed in the east for some long amount of time before being transfered here...

At any rate, it's undoubtedly going to rain soon, so I suppose that means that I should quit trotting along the sidewalk outside of the military headquarters debating about whether or not my Uncle Roy is too buy to see his 15 year old niece, I'm the only 15 year old niece he has, you know, so he should have time to see me, but he's busy, dad told me once that my uncle wants to be the Fuhrer one day, so I don't want to bother him, he's trying to change Amestris, for the better, too. I just wish I could help him sometimes...

People say I look like him, you know, they say I look a lot like my uncle, especially my hair. I love my hair, honestly, that's probably not a good thing, but I am totally in love with this hair, this long beautiful straight jet black hair, I love it. You know, no one has ever been able to figure out where my eyes come from though, though we know that my hair is from my grandma, my eyes, no one knows, I have freak eyes, makes up for the perfect hair. My eyes are blue, nothing like my uncle's. Now, when I say blue, don't you dare think of blue like dark pretty blue, or ocean blue, or light sky blue, oh no, my eyes are blue nearing white. Like...a glowing lazar type of blue, supremely bright, almost like jade, but much brighter, trust me it's freakish...I have freckles, too, weird, no one else has freckles...they're just a light dusting, but they're defiantly there, it's odd, no one else has freckles either...wait, why in the world am I describing my appearance to myself mentally?!

"Dad, I'm home."

I shouted as I opened the door to our quiet little house. No answer. Now that was odd, even odder than the fact that I just randomly started contemplating a war between pens and pencils during science class.

"Dad?"

Nothing.

Now this was strange, this never happened, never. The only time that this had ever happened before had been never...I kicked my shoes off inside the door and ran further inside, my socks preventing the cold from seeping too far into my toes, I hated cold toes...of course, there was a multitude of things that I hated, or well, had pet peeves of, or well, I guess hated was the correct word from the beginning...

I wandered into the kitchen and found no one. Now, I could have gone down the hall and searched the bedrooms, but the only time my dad was there was when he was sleeping, and no one slept at 4:30 P.M. , especially not in Central. I don't know why, but these people don't go to bed until late...it's odd...out east it's the opposite, but that's a long story...

I made my way down the stairs to the basement and was about to call out again when something stopped me. Stopped me dead, in my tracks.

Cold.

I had never felt so cold in my entire life. It wasn't the kind of cold you get when the wind blows in your face, that was just a chill compared to this, although i guess this was just a chill until I looked down. Before I looked down it was just the simple matter of something cold wetting the bottom of my sock, which was logical because our basement floor was made of cement, and it was always cold, always. It wasn't the cold in the bottom of my sock that I found cold, it wasn't that, and it wasn't really the fact that my sock was wet, anything could wet the bottom of a sock right? What stopped me was the color, the pure terror of that damned color...

Red.

I hated red, why was also another story, which I'm sure will come up in one of my ridiculous rants sometime, but at the moment, we'll just say that I hate red because anything that's red, and slippery, is always, always, always, going to be blood.

///Flashback\\\

Cold. But this wasn't a bad cold, it was a good, yummy, vanilla flavored cold, the kind you get from ice cream. Which of course, was logical, seeing as I was walking down the block licking an ice cream cone that my grandma had just bought me. Chocolate-Vanilla Swirl, there was no better ice cream than this, if someone tries to tell you different you're being tricked by some evil force, believe me, chocolate-vanilla swirl is the best, but it's better when your grandma buys it for you, just because she cares, and it's even better, when she walks with you while you lick it, little drops of it laying forgotten on the sidewalk behind you, but that's normal isn't it? It's summer, ice cream always melts in the summer...

The only thing was that it was getting dark, it'd be dark soon, I always hated the dark, not because I was scared there were monsters in it, but because I couldn't see the sky, I couldn't glimpse the future at night, unless it was precipitating outside...my dad always thought that this was ridiculous, he didn't understand why I needed to be able to see the future. Of course, he didn't believe that the sky held the future, so of course he didn't get it... But grandma understood... but of course this was logical, because she's the one who taught me about the magic of the sky in the first place... so it's logical that she understands, isn't it?

And suddenly, as if the sky were reminding me, in the most brutal way the world had to offer, that I wasn't supposed to be thinking about randomly obscure things at the moment... that I wasn't supposed to be wishing I could just look up and see whether or not something bad were going to happen, the world decided it was just going to throw it at me, smack in the face too, the bad thing, that is...

"Hand it over."

Now, lets review what just happened to me in the last five seconds that has caused me to totally abandon my ice cream that now lies on the pavement at my feet, and focus souly what's being set right in front of me. There's a man here, I've never seen him before in my life, I'll swear to that, he's mean and vicious looking, like the kind of people the military keeps in their prison, which is located in central, so seeing on of them isn't so uncommon... what bothers me so much isn't really the man, but what he's holding.

A gun.

A gun, and I don't mean a little sissy bee-bee gun either, like the kind my dad keeps downstairs at our house, where we live with my grandma, I mean the mean vicious looking kind of guns that the military gives to their soldiers when the go to Ishval, or so my uncle says they did...

Now, it's quite obvious that he isn't after my ice cream, which is now melting on the pavement at my feet, he's talking to my grandma, she's the one holding a purse. And expensive looking purse, too. Of course, she has maybe twenty dollars with her at the most, nothing really worth fighting over right? Just twenty dollars, which logically meant that if she gave whoever this was, this man, that the sky had dropped down on me, punishing me for something that I don't understand, undoubtedly, with their big shiny machine murder weapon gun, that they'd leave after they got the purse.

Wrong.

Why I still don't know...but I'm wrong...

"Run."

It isn't a suggestion like things that come out of grandma's mouth usually are, it's an order, the type my uncle gives in the military, and he only does it when he's extremely agitated.(it usually has something to do with someone named Ed, or something like that...) It caught me off guard, hearing her talk like that, so I stayed there for a minute, in a spellbound sort of way.

"Run."

It's even more forceful then it was before, somehow, I never knew grandma was capable of talking that way, I didn't want to disobey, I couldn't, I just couldn't stay put after being told in that manner, so I did was I was told.

I ran.

That's when I heard it, that noise, I absolutely can't stand loud noises, and that's exactly what it was, and I knew exactly what had made that noise too, I had only heard it once before, a friend of my uncle's, I think her name's Riza, showed me once, how guns are shot, it's fascinating honestly, but the noise... I stopped running long enough to look back over my shoulder at the noise.

Bad move there, bad, bad move.

The guy was gone, but the sight of it, the blood splattered everywhere...grandma, why, why didn't you give it to him?! I just needed out of there, I needed as far away from that sight as possible, though I knew running from something that was now etched into my mind, wasn't going to work well, actually, it just wasn't going to work. I guess I didn't care, I ran, I ran as far away as I could.

///\\\

I was only ten when that happened, when grandma had left, and I still remember it like it happened yesterday, or just a few hours ago, honestly...I still wonder why I made the mistake of looking back over my shoulder, at the blood, I knew I shouldn't have...and now, it seemed like I was going to do it all over again...

Our basement has three main rooms, to the right of the bottom of our stairs is the storage room, where we shove everything that we can't get rid of. (so basically everything that we own.) To the left, the laundry room, and then, if you go into the laundry room and then go right, you end up in my dad's room, not his bedroom, just his room.

My feet were like stones now, why was I even moving? Why hadn't I run? Run away from this reoccurring nightmare...

Just like last time, I intensely loathed myself for choosing to look, when I knew it'd get stuck there, along with the last time I'd seen spilled blood. And just like last time, it most defiantly was stuck. This was worse than before though, honestly, this was, I don't know what it was, it looked like a bomb exploded inside of well...my dad...I don't know why I wasn't crying by now, I should have, but i wasn't, I was just staring, staring at the blood.

Finally, unable to stand it anymore, I ran, just like before, only this time, instead of running home, I run to headquarters, to find my uncle.

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Wow it's done, this was really fun to write! I hope you guys liked it, now if you could be ever so kind as to review for me?


	2. Chapter 2

Wooooot, chapter twooo! Yea...

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"...It isn't fair, uncle Roy...it's not fair..."

He sighs, "I know, kiddo, it's not..."

I stared down at the blood beneath my feet, yes, that's right, I'm standing in blood. Why? Honestly, I don't know, maybe I thought that if I stood there long enough it'd just all go away, soak up into my socks or something...

"You shouldn't have to do this."

The statement comes out of my mouth so apathetically it's almost scary...almost. He looks at me funnily, he must not understand what I'm talking about, so I clarify.

"Investigate this, isn't that what the investigations department is for?"

His expression changes slowly, from confusion to someone who looks like they understand, and then, back to confusion.

"It's my job until they get here."

I just shrug, he still looks confused, so I ask,

"What are you looking at me like that for?"

He still looks confused, accept now it's slowly morfing into concern instead of confusion, or an erie mixture of the two...

"Why aren't you crying?"

It seems like a strange, random question when I first hear it, so I look confused for a minute, and then I fall back to reality, and remember, I remember that I'm currently standing in my father's blood, splattered all over our basement walls...all over the floor, and covering more and more of my socks with each tick of the clock.

"...I don't know."

I had to admit that, I had no idea why I wasn't crying, it seemed odd to me too, that I wasn't crying, wasn't balling my eyes out, I had when grandma had left, when I had seen her blood, I cried all the way home, I cried all night, I cried for as long as I could remember, and now, when it's my dad's blood, I do nothing, there must be something wrong with me...

He looks at me finally, assessing me I think, probably trying to make sure I didn't hit my head, or maybe that I wasn't being put at invisible gun point to say that. He must have finally figured it's normal, because he stops looking at me and turns back to the mess covering the floor, and now a good portion of my socks.

"We should get you out of here."

Well, I can't really say I wasn't expecting that one...

"...Why?"

There's several logical reasons why at this point, so I don't know why I asked, I guess I just wanted to know which one was concerning him at the moment... He must not have completely known himself, because he has to think before answering my question.

"Just...incase whoever did this comes back, I don't want you in danger, lets go, I'll take you back to headquarters for awhile."

Headquarters, I just walked by there less than an hour ago, and yet it seems like it's been an eternity... When we get outside, I notice that it's started raining. Actually, that's inaccurate, it's pouring rain like I've never seen it do before. For a moment, I envied the sky, it could show the sadness and the emotion that I probably should be showing at this point, I should be crying...I should be sad, grieveful, and yet, I'm just sitting here, in my uncle's car, being driving to headquarters because some maniac is most probably after my life at the moment, and I'm completely, utterly, calm.

When we get there, to headquarters, my uncle takes me to his office.

"Hold on for a minute, Alex, I need to call your aunt..."

Aunt Pat, nice lady, really nice, she looks a lot like Roy, but with curly hair... Well, let me clarify what I meant by nice, too. She has nice intentions, she just... shows them oddly, or, maybe she just has a hard time showing them...

My uncle walked over to his desk, nice desk, too, of course, 'nice' wasn't being used in the same way it was when refering to my aunt...that'd be odd... He picked up his black and golden phone and dialed my aunt's number, I could tell the number because I've heard the sound of it so much, my dad and my aunt used to talk a lot...

I didn't feel like listening to him tell her about my dad, so I wondered on over to my uncle's black sofa and sat down, nice sofa, too, the military must give you nicer furniture the higher up you get into the ranks, Uncle Roy is a colonel... my dad just worked in investigations, he used to work with another friend of my uncle's, his name was Hughes, Maes Hughes...I say used to work with him because someone killed Hughes, too...they killed him for finding out too much information on something, or well, that's what my uncle believes, and well, I trust my uncle...

Maybe...maybe that's what happened to dad too, he did work with Hughes, and Hughes' death is recent... maybe whatever Hughes found out... my dad found out too...

...I really shouldn't be aware of this, but... my uncle, Uncle Roy, he thinks it's the higher ups in the military that are doing this, this killing, or, at least, he thinks they're involved...

_"...I'm going to the top, and when I get there...I'll change this state...and stop this suffering..."_

The sound of the phone being hung up pulls my attention back down to Earth, at least, for the moment... I sit up, as I had somehow managed to go from sitting to laying and staring at the ceiling...

"What'd she say?"

I asked, but, I don't think I really wanted to know...

"Well..."

I didn't like where this was going, I could tell from his voice, this was going no where good...

"She wasn't exactly happy, if you get my meaning..."

Well duh... her little brother is dead, what the... I mean... what do you expect? I just nod my head, figuring that that's all they really discussed, it had been what, five minutes?

"That's not all..."

I looked back up, wondering what else they could have really said in five minutes... My uncle just sighed – that's a bad sign...

"I think... I think you're going to be with her, for awhile, Alex..."

I just sort of froze, he knew I wasn't going to like that, he knew, I could tell by looking at him. It wasn't that my aunt was mean, I had just been thinking earlier of how nice, or well, how nice she was trying to be... It's that... my aunt is sick, what with, I have no clue, I kind of doubt anyone does... but... I don't want to live with her because of that... it's not like it's contagious or something... but... she has enough to worry about without worrying about me, but, I know better than to argue, so I just nod slowly.

"C'mon... lets go get your stuff."

I absolutely hated this, not the thing with my aunt, I could hate that later, but at the moment I just hated seeing my uncle this way, it was understandable if it happened to me, I didn't really care, I didn't really care if I was grieving (which I still wasn't...) but it bothered me seeing my uncle this way, so sad... it wasn't _fair._

"I'm sorry."

I just blurted it out, I hadn't really meant for it to come out, I was thinking it sure, I was thinking how sorry I was for my uncle, but... I hadn't meant to say it out loud, I don't know why...but I hadn't meant to say it out loud... My uncle just raised his eyebrow a bit and gave me that confused look again.

"Sorry...? Sorry for...?"

He blinks a few times, quite obviously trying to figure out what I'm thinking...

"-- This isn't your fault!"

He tags the last part on, as if to make sure that's not what I'm thinking, I just shake my head.

"No, it's...it's not...it's just... I'm sorry about your brother..."

This look is more surprised then confused, it's kind of odd seeing it on his face, he isn't caught off guard often...

"Alex, he was your _dad _why are you telling _me_ that _you're_ sorry? It should be the other way around..."

I just shrug at the last part, should it really? I'm not the one who looks sad, I'm just sitting here... as if nothing ever happened... scary really...

"He was your older brother, didn't you look up to him?"

That wasn't really the best response to his question, but it's the best I can come up with at the moment... That must have really caught him off guard, because he looks more surprised then before, if that's possible... Finally he just sighs and nods his head.

"Yea... I did... But kid, this is your _dad_, why aren't you crying?"

I just shrugged again, I honestly didn't know, and I told him so, he looked at me, concerned again, and finally he lets it go, and we go back to his car, and head back to my... my house, it's not home anymore...

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Well, that's chapter two... you guys hardly gave me any reviews last time! Thanks to the ones who did, of course, but lets get s'more this time please? lets see... I'll update when I hit... eight reviews, yea...


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